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The story of the toddler who died after getting sick in ICE detention

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/paw9ky/toddler-died-after-getting-sick-in-ice-custody

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“Instead of offering safe harbor from the life-threatening violence they were fleeing, ICE detained Yazmin and her baby in a place with unsafe conditions, neglectful medical care, and inadequate supervision,” said R. Stanton Jones, a partner at Washington, D.C.-based Arnold & Porter law firm. “While there, Mariee contracted a respiratory infection that went woefully undertreated for nearly a month. After it became clear that Mariee was gravely ill, ICE simply discharged mother and daughter. Yazmin immediately sought medical care for her baby, but it was too late.”

 

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This a related topic: Hispanic American citizens denied passports or stripped of their passports and sent into deportation detention because they were delivered by a midwife (in most instances) or in one case, a physician, who had at some point signed false birth certificates for babies not born in the US.   Apparently, one midwife admitted to TWO instances of signing a false birth certificate; she has delivered around 600 babies.  

Washington Post: US denying passports to Hispanic Americans in South Texas

The text for this CNN article is somewhat brief; the original WaPo article is much more detailed but WaPo is behind a paywall.  

There are thousands of people who were born in the US who are already in or will be in an existential nightmare, if their birth certificate was signed by a midwife, or by one obstetrician who delivered around 15,000 babies over the course of his very long career.  Many women in South Texas use midwives because delivering in a hospital is too expensive. 

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Hmm...could we have Trump's birth certificate (and Pence and Hannity and...) declared invalid so we can deport them as well? They seem to think Russia is a nice place...

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17 hours ago, Howl said:

the original WaPo article is much more detailed but WaPo is behind a paywall.  

FIY: WaPo offers non-subscribers the possibility of viewing a limited number of articles for free (I believe about 6) per month, if you agree to disabling any adblockers (for their website only) you may have. 

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I just read a Yahoo article about the children who still have not been reunited, and am seething after reading the comments posted by the ignoramuses. Yes, children in the US are separated from their parents if their parents go to prison. But no, their children of inmates are not incarcerated in detention camps, too. They live with family, or, if there is no family, they generally are in foster care. These children in the detention centers are kept there, and can't visit their parents, as many children of prison inmates do.

Quit comparing apples and oranges!

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On 8/30/2018 at 3:37 PM, Howl said:

This a related topic: Hispanic American citizens denied passports or stripped of their passports and sent into deportation detention because they were delivered by a midwife (in most instances) or in one case, a physician, who had at some point signed false birth certificates for babies not born in the US.   Apparently, one midwife admitted to TWO instances of signing a false birth certificate; she has delivered around 600 babies.  

Washington Post: US denying passports to Hispanic Americans in South Texas

The text for this CNN article is somewhat brief; the original WaPo article is much more detailed but WaPo is behind a paywall.  

There are thousands of people who were born in the US who are already in or will be in an existential nightmare, if their birth certificate was signed by a midwife, or by one obstetrician who delivered around 15,000 babies over the course of his very long career.  Many women in South Texas use midwives because delivering in a hospital is too expensive. 

I am one of the people affected by this due to being adopted from the region in the 90s with a midwife attending the birth . My birth mother and adoptive mom have spent the last 24 hours looking for documentation as I am set to leave the country for school this fall. Pending the outcome of all this my advisor told me I should consider staying put for now because who knows if I’d be allowed or come back/cross the border again. (I have a passport but due to them seizing passports from people that fit the profile from that region at borders it could be an issue) 

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"Trump administration to triple size of Texas tent camp for migrant children"

Spoiler

A tent camp for migrant children in the desert outside El Paso will expand to accommodate a growing number of Central American children crossing the border, the Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday.

HHS, the federal agency tasked with caring for migrant children and teenagers in U.S. custody, said it would more than triple the size of its camp at the Tornillo-Guadalupe Land Port of Entry from 1,200 beds to as many as 3,800.

The Trump administration established the camp in June as a temporary shelter because its facilities elsewhere were running out of space. That occurred at the height of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” prosecution initiative, a crackdown that separated about 2,500 migrant children from their parents.

Widespread condemnation forced Trump to reverse course and stop the separations , but since then HHS has taken in greater numbers of underage migrants. The number of families illegally crossing the border jumped again in recent weeks, according to border agents and administration officials. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is scheduled to release its latest arrest totals Wednesday.

Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, said the need for emergency capacity was the result of the latest surge at the border, not the administration’s decision to separate families during the crackdown this spring.

“ ‘Family separations’ resulting from the zero tolerance policy ended on June 20, 2018 and are not driving this need,” Wolfe said in a statement.

HHS officials have “worked round the clock to add beds or add shelters to avoid any backup” at the border,” Wolfe added. He said the agency has 12,800 minors in its custody, the highest number ever. Minors spend an average of 59 days in HHS custody, up from 51 days in 2017.

HHS has used the Tornillo site primarily to house older teens, channeling younger children in its custody to more “permanent” sites among the approximately 100 shelters where migrant children are housed.

At the Tornillo camp, teens sleep in large, climate-controlled canvas tents, and the site offers a full range of services including recreational and educational activities, according to HHS.

Wolfe said 1,400 of the 3,800 beds at the expanded site would remain on reserve status, so they could be “brought online incrementally as needed.” The camp will remain open at least through the end of this year, according to HHS.

Underage migrants who arrive without a parent may include teens traveling alone as well as younger children sent for by parents or relatives living in the United States. After crossing from Mexico, they typically turn themselves in to Border Patrol, which is legally obligated to transfer minors to HHS within 72 hours.

Underage migrants who enter the United States are often seeking some form of humanitarian protection, citing threats to their lives and their families by gangs and lawlessness in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

For children in its care, HHS works to identify and vet an adult sponsor who can assume custody and ensure the minors comply with immigration proceedings and court appointments. In nearly 90 percent of cases, that sponsor is a parent or close relative.

A new information-sharing agreement between HHS and the Department of Homeland Security has increased concerns that some potential sponsors living in the United States illegally will be too scared to come forward, knowing their information could be accessible to immigration enforcement agents.

To accommodate more migrant children and longer stays in U.S. custody, the Trump administration has asked the Pentagon to host additional camps and shelters on military bases, but Wolfe said the government has not broken ground on any new facilities.

Homeland Security officials says immigration and asylum laws make it difficult to deport children who arrive illegally. According to the latest DHS statistics, 98 percent of the 31,754 unaccompanied minors from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who were taken into custody during the 2017 fiscal year were still in the United States as of June 30.

 

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8 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

I know I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again. We can be angry at the policymakers for coming up with these atrocities, and rightfully so. But we should be even more angry at the people who choose to willingly implement these inhumane and cruel policies. It is their willingness and sometimes even eagerness to actually do all these things to other, helpless human beings and innocent young children (toddlers and babies included), that truly bothers me the most. 

Die Endlösung would never have amounted to much more than talk, if there hadn't been camp officers and guards willing to implement it, willing to starve and torture and kill other people. 

Honestly, the people working for ICE and implementing this appalling policy are on par with those concentration camp officers and guards. I'm afraid it will only be a matter of time before the killing starts. 

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We all know the atrocious policy, we all know they are putting children in cages. I still found these images incredibly disturbing. The part where you can see the kids lying next too each other underneath silver foil behind wire mesh - wire mesh - is absolutely abhorrent. They are being treated like animals. Like slaves. 

:cry:

The horror of what America is doing to little innocent children will go down in history as their greatest shame.

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Sweet Rufus. :pb_sad:

Migrant Children in Search of Justice: A 2-Year-Old’s Day in Immigration Court

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The youngest child to come before the bench in federal immigration courtroom No. 14 was so small she had to be lifted into the chair. Even the judge in her black robes breathed a soft “aww” as her latest case perched on the brown leather.

Her feet stuck out from the seat in small gray sneakers, her legs too short to dangle. Her fists were stuffed under her knees. As soon as the caseworker who had sat her there turned to go, she let out a whimper that rose to a thin howl, her crumpled face a bursting dam.

The girl, Fernanda Jacqueline Davila, was 2 years old: brief life, long journey. The caseworker, a big-boned man from the shelter that had been contracted to raise her since she was taken from her grandmother at the border in late July, was the only person in the room she had met before that day.

“How old are you?” the judge asked, after she had motioned for the caseworker to return to Fernanda’s side and the tears had stopped. “Do you speak Spanish?”

An interpreter bent toward the child and caught her eye, repeating the questions in Spanish. Fernanda’s mouse-brown pigtails brushed the back of the chair, but she stayed silent, eyes big. “She’s … she’s nodding her head,” the judge said, peering down from the bench through black-rim glasses. This afternoon in New York immigration court, Judge Randa Zagzoug had nearly 30 children to hear from, ages 2 through 17. Fernanda was No. 26.

Judge Zagzoug came to the bench in 2012, around the time children started showing up by the thousands at the border on their own, mostly from Central America. Now that immigration controls have stiffened in response, more children than ever are in government custody, for far longer than they ever have been — weeks turning to months in shelters that were never meant to become homes.

The result is a new wave of children in the immigration courts across America. Though the exact figures are not known, lawyers who work with immigrants said the large number of migrant children now being held in detention has given rise to a highly unusual situation: more and more young children coming to court.

“We rarely had children under the age of 6 until the last year or so,” said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “We started seeing them as a regular presence in our docket.”

These young immigrants are stranded at the junction of several forces: the Trump administration’s determination to discourage immigrants from trying to cross the border; the continuing flow of children journeying by themselves from Central America; the lingering effects of last summer’s family-separation crisis at the border; and a new government policy that has made it much more difficult for relatives to claim children from federal custody.

At the moment, the government’s rolls include hundreds of children in shelters and temporary foster care programs who were taken from an adult at the border, whether a parent, grandparent or some other companion. About 13,000 children who came to the United States on their own were being held in federally contracted shelters this month, more than five times the number in May 2017.

All of which means there are more children showing up more often to federal immigration courtrooms like Judge Zagzoug’s, at hearings that could determine whether they will be deported, reunited with their parents, or granted the asylum that their parents desperately want for them. They often sit at counsel tables alone, unaccompanied by any family and sometimes without even a lawyer.

Under the circumstances, the children in Courtroom 14, many of whom were from a shelter operated by the Cayuga Centers, were fortunate. Many were allowed to go home at night to a foster family, though they returned to the shelter by day. And they could count on lawyers from Catholic Charities, which receives funding from a nonprofit group to represent immigrant children in New York City shelters.

“We used to just deal with teenagers,” one lawyer, Jodi Ziesemer, said as she ushered children to the 14th floor before the hearings began. “Now they’re …” Her gaze swept the small group. Fernanda was gripping a green apple with both hands, occasionally taking a bite. As they moved down the hallway, her caseworker picked her up and carried her toward court.

In a spotlessly bright waiting room, Ms. Ziesemer’s colleague, Miguel Medrano, spent a few minutes trying to prepare Fernanda for court. He bent low to talk to her, asking her name, her age, whether she spoke English or Spanish. “Sí?” he prompted her. No response. He shook his head. “Well, if she can’t, she can’t.” He turned back to her and tried again in English. “So we’re going to see the judge,” he said gently. No response.

“She’s very shy,” the caseworker said.

Inside the courtroom, Judge Zagzoug picked up the day’s juvenile detained docket. “It’s Sept. 27, 2018, and this is Judge Randa Zagzoug,” she said for the record. She introduced Ms. Ziesemer, who grinned and waved and nodded at each child as he or she came up to the respondents’ table, and the Department of Homeland Security lawyer, who did not look over from the government’s table. The judge tried to explain the proceedings to each child who sat before her, facing the gold-fringed American flag.

Pascual — “Pascualito,” a caseworker called him — was 6. He had been living at the shelter since being separated from his father by immigration authorities at the border in May.

Marilyn, 11, was hoping to join her mother in Florida. But because the Trump administration was now requiring relatives who wanted to take children out of government custody to undergo fingerprinting and background checks, it might take another three or four months.

And so it went for many of the other children: Came by herself. Came by himself. Supposed to go live with a mother, an uncle, a cousin, in California, in Michigan, in Atlanta.

The judge ended each hearing with words of encouragement: “Good luck.” “Buena suerte,” repeated the translator, child after child.

When Ms. Ziesemer started at Catholic Charities a decade ago, the program for child immigrants appearing in court on their own was so small that it was run by a part-time coordinator, and all their clients could fit in a roughly 10-bed shelter, a small house in Queens. Now there are staff members conducting screenings of seven or eight children a day, trying to coax basic facts out of children who might be too young or too frightened to articulate what had happened to them. There are so many that they sometimes do not meet their clients until the day of their hearings.

Until a couple of months ago, most of the children never would have stayed in a shelter long enough to end up alone before a judge. But the bottleneck in the background-check process means longer stays in custody, and the possibility that some children might have to see a judge multiple times before being delivered to their mother or uncle or cousin. The shelters are now almost full — not because more children are entering the country, immigration advocates say, but because the government has tossed up another obstacle to leaving.

Once released, the children must face a different and more difficult courtroom test: In another immigration courthouse, somewhere in America, they will have to make a case that they meet the standard for asylum, or they will be deported. In some cases, they will have to testify about the trauma they experienced or the danger from which they fled.

Things were simpler for Fernanda, whose family in Honduras wanted her returned. Born to a teenage mother four months after her father died in a car accident, Fernanda had been raised by her paternal grandparents in a working-class suburb of Tegucigalpa, the capital. Hector Enrique Lazo and Amada Vallecillos doted on their granddaughter. She was the only piece of their son they had left.

But in July — unexpectedly, according to Mr. Lazo — Fernanda’s maternal grandmother, Nubia Archaga, took Fernanda with her overland to the American border.

Ms. Archaga turned herself in to Border Patrol with Fernanda in her arms, she said in an interview, but on the third morning after they arrived, Fernanda was taken from the holding facility where they had been staying. Ms. Archaga said that she heard her grandchild weep and cry out, “mami, mami,” just a few moments later.

“I decided to bring her so that she could be in a better environment and have a better future,” Ms. Archaga said, between sobs, speaking after she was released from detention about 10 days ago. “I wanted the girl to have a better life.”

Back in Honduras, her paternal grandparents were distraught. Mr. Lazo accused Ms. Archaga of taking the child because she believed entering the United States with a young child would be easier. After calling a toll-free number publicized on Honduran television to reach the American authorities, he eventually found Fernanda. But for all the notarized paperwork he had sent to the consulate and the shelter, all the times he had talked an American volunteer, he still had no idea when he would see his granddaughter again.

“We just want the girl to come back to our country. We are desperate,” Mr. Lazo said. “She is so cute. I am worried she will be given up for adoption. We are suffering immensely. I don’t want her to forget us.”

In New York a few weeks later, the judge was granting Fernanda’s family’s request to have her returned to them.

“Will you explain to your client?” she asked the Catholic Charities lawyer.

Mr. Medrano smiled ruefully over at Fernanda, who had said nothing during the hearing. “Your honor, I’ll do my best to explain,” he said.

The judge gave it a try herself, telling Fernanda that she would be returning to her family. Fernanda seemed to be nodding slightly. “She seems to be satisfied,” Judge Zagzoug noted for the record.

It was over. Judge, clerk and interpreter waved to Fernanda. The caseworker lifted her off her seat and led her, big hand over little, back for more waiting.

Why are the judges not simply refusing to hear these cases where toddlers are expected to represent themselves? 

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Rereading this, I'm gobsmacked:

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Sarah Kendzior✔@sarahkendzior

Kansas woman told birth certificate wasn’t enough to prove citizenship for passport 

The related article notes that this woman had been issued a US passport in the past.  Let me repeat this: a person with a US passport was not allowed to renew her passport, even though she had a birth certificate.  WTAF?????

Edited by Howl
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